(Originally written for a graduate level psychology class,
this article has been edited and many specific references to the
books listed at the end have been removed. The original version
is available on request.)

This is a first hand account and analysis of a Holotropic Breath
session that occurred on in 1994. Holotropic Breathwork has been
developed by Stanislav Grof as a therapeutic method for uncovering
unconscious material in an experiential way. According to Grof,
"Holotropic experiences encountered in the process of in-depth
self-exploration have intrinsic healing potential. Those that
are difficult and painful in nature - if completed and well-integrated
- seem to eliminate sources of disturbing emotions and tensions
that would otherwise interfere with everyday life." Grof
contends that much of the material that usually presents during
the breathwork is representative of or tied to one of four perinatal
matrices. The following is a brief physical description of each
of the four Basic Perinatal Matrices (BPM):

BPM I Intrauterine state before the onset of the birth process

BPM II Contractions begin and the fetus is constricted and
confined

BPM III Movement through the birth canal

BPM IV Infant emerges from the mother as a separate being

In his book, The Trauma of Birth, Otto Rank suggests
to fellow psychotherapists that "...the birth trauma in its
psycho-biological importance...gives us...a real substratum for
all psycho-physiological connections and relations." In the
more than six decades since Rank's statement little has been done
in traditional psychology to explore the psychological impact
of the birth process.

It appears from the work of depth psychologists, like Grof,
that the trauma of the birth process is imprinted in the unconscious
along with a multitude of symbols and images which depict the
feelings and thoughts of the fetus. These traumas associated with
birth are one of the sources of disturbing emotions and tensions
that Grof suggests are healed during Holotropic Breathwork. However,
the same emotions and feelings are encountered on many levels
in the psyche: biographical (the individual's personal history),
perinatal (the individual's birth process), and transpersonal
(access to other lifetimes and collective consciousness). In describing
one aspect of the transpersonal level, Grof states, "When
such sequences are associated with a sense of personal memory
from one's spiritual rather than biological history, we can refer
to them as karmic or past incarnation experiences."

I came into this lifetime through a labor caesarean birth process.
My mother and I were in labor for 19 hours before I was delivered.
I experienced BPM I, BPM II, and BPM IV. The material that came
from my unconscious during the breath session seemed to be focused
on a past incarnation which correlated to a perinatal experience,
specifically BPM II.

Consistently, in the session, before each new vision and awareness,
I experienced some somatic manifestation of the events that were
about to reveal themselves from my unconscious. Only a few minutes
after I started the breathing my head started itching more and
more so that I could't just observe the feeling but had to scratch
my whole head in a frantic effort to escape the itching. As I
was scratching my head I realized that it felt like I was scratching
stubble and I felt that my head had been shaved. I moved into
that vision and saw that I was lying on a table in a room with
very bright lights. I was a young woman somewhere between the
ages of 15 and 30, that part was not very clear. What was extraordinarily
clear was that my body was lying on the table completely uncovered.
At this point I knew that I was already starting to detach from
my physical state. My body was emaciated. I looked like a skeleton.
I remember having so much compassion for the deteriorated and
vulnerable shape in which I found myself. Next, I felt sharp pains
in my abdomen. The pains were on the sides of my abdomen and it
felt like pains in the ovaries. There were three men dressed in
white coats also in the room with me. Suddenly I realized that
they had cut open my abdomen horizontally and were doing something
internally. It felt like they were either examining my ovaries
or removing them. I could not be sure. One thing was very clear,
however, and that was that the more shallow I breathed the less
pain I felt. I tried breathing less and less but I also felt panic
and rage towards these men who were ignoring the fact that I was
not breathing. Finally my breathing stopped entirely and I was
able to lift out of my body. There were simultaneously feelings
of great relief and tremendous compassion for what my body had
endured. I looked at it for a while before going up to the light.
Before I ascended I repeated over and over, "Never again,
I 'll never be in a body again!" I then merged with the light,
at the same time maintaining my individual awareness. While united
with the light I became aware of the moans and cries of the others
in the breath session. And I silently called out to them to just
come to the light and whatever pain they were experiencing would
stop.

The next somatic signal was shallow breathing once again. Periodically,
breath would entirely stop. The next image was of being in the
fetal position in the womb. I was presented derriere first towards
the birth canal. Feelings of anger about being back in a body,
especially a female body, were coupled with the thought that if
I stayed in the position I was in that I would not have to leave
the womb. I thought it would be better to die from lack of breath
again than to be born. In a flash I was back on the table again
in the first scene. I felt the pain in my ovaries, the anger towards
these men who did not pay attention to my death, and the cold
and humiliation from exposure on the table. Again I rose out of
the body, back to the light briefly, and back into the womb. This
journey, or sequence, repeated three times. My actual birth from
the womb was not part of this session. After the third journey,
I started coughing. The cough felt like a method of purging. A
facilitator assisted my purging coughing until I felt comfortable
in my body in the present. As I drew my mandala,
I cried so hard I was afraid that the paper would be ruined. My
sitter asked if I wanted to lie down for a while longer before
completing the drawing. The urgency to draw the picture of my
anguish was compelling and so I stopped crying and finished the
mandala.

The layering of images connected to diminishing breathing is
an example of a "system of condensed experience" or
"COEX system" as described by Grof. As material comes
from the unconscious, Grof states that it can be from biological
birth, as well as from certain areas of the transpersonal realm,
such as past incarnation memories. This appears to be what was
happening in my case. On one level I was preventing pain and creating
my exit from the physical world in a past life by reducing my
breathing while on another level I was trying to do the same thing
as my birth process began in this lifetime. "A soul may incarnate
with specific intentions that are matched beautifully by a caesarean
birth." writes Jane English in Different Doorway.
Even after 19 hours of labor, I still could not be turned for
a deliverable presentation and had to be removed surgically. Given
the vow I made as I left my body on the table to never be in a
body again, I understand the resistance to my birth in this life.
Not only had I been at the light for only a brief period before
returning to the physical world but I was also coming back in
a female body. The feminine quality I interpreted, both in the
past life and intrauterine, to be vulnerable and therefore putting
me in danger. In my childhood I emulated my father and throughout
life have buried the feminine traits of softness, emotionality,
and vulnerablilty under more masculine characteristics of stoicism,
strength, aggression, and independence.

An individual under the influence of BPM II is involved in
scenes of violence in the position of the helpless victim. Grof
suggests a variety of roles may be adopted such as prisoners in
concentration camps. I find my experience during the breathwork
to be an interesting example of the holotropic consciousness -
the overlay of BPM II sensations and a "perinatal matrix
appropriate" karmic experience. My sensation while in the
body of the concentration camp prisoner/patient was that of reliving
the event. It felt like a personal memory rather than a glimpse
into someone else's experience. I was very familiar with the body
but it had so deteriorated that at the time of the scene in the
operating room I was starting to feel detached.

The journey from operating room to merging with the light to
being in the womb in the second perinatal matrix repeated in the
same sequence three times seemed to be a type of karmic pattern
healing. Grof proposes that the reliving of traumatic memories
from previous incarnations is important in order to free oneself
from the bondage. Issues concerning the fear of being in my body
have been a major focus in my therapy and various healing processes.
Previously I and the therapists have attributed these fears solely
to sexual abuse during the preverbal stage of childhood development.
After my experience in the Holotropic Breathwork session, I understand
profoundly that my physical state is a multi-level issue. - biographical,
perinatal, and transpersonal. Two days after the session I made
a commitment to work more consistently on healing the physical
traumas. Grof observes, "Another interesting aspect of karmic
experiences is that they are clearly connected with various emotional,
psychosomatic, and interpersonal problems of the individual. Most
frequently, they represent the deepest roots of problems, in addition
to specific biographical and perinatal determinants."

Many weeks later I continue to process the experiences from
the breath session. Many questions have been answered and many
new questions arise in my mind concerning my own personal lifepath
as well as societal issues. I am comfortable with the connection
my unconscious was showing to me between a past life and my birth
process into this lifetime. However, I am also compelled to return
for more holotropic work until my unconscious is ready to allow
me to relive the caesarean birth as Grof has described it, surgical
cuts, manual extraction from the womb, emerging into light through
a bloody opening. Perhaps the past life memory is preparation
for the experience of jumping directly from BPM II to BPM IV in
another holotropic session. In Jane English's book I find a multitude
of connections to my own life experiences. Simply reading her
account of her healing process has therapeutic value for me. Perhaps
it is the validation of my experiences. She suggests that a type
of healing movement or body work could be developed for persons
of caesarean born people. Our experiences and physical traumas
are markedly different from vaginally born people. Therefore,
it follows that caesareans need different methods for healing.

On the transpersonal level, a question has been haunting me
since my holotropic breathwork session. Is there a connection
between reincarnation of holocaust experiencers and the onset
in the Western Culture of anorexia nervosa? Psychologists have
pointed to control issues, self-hate, and self-object hate as
the causes of self-starvation. All these arguments appear valid
on the "biographical" level. However, it occurs to me
that there is some type of imprint on the collective consciousness
as a result of tragic concentration camp experiences. If we are,
in fact, all connected, how can we not be affected by an atrocity
such as the holocaust? In other eras the same "causes for
anorexia" were part of interpersonal dynamics, how were they
expressed then? And why is anorexia nervosa a vehicle for expression
of strong emotions today? Of course, then the question arises
how can we heal an imprint on the collective consciousness? It
would seem to me that the healing might still need to occur on
an individual basis. I believe the answers to all the questions
are multi-level. The "cause and effect" paradigm limits
our understanding of life. A phenomenological approach suggests
a co-constitution of reality. The biographical, perinatal and
transpersonal levels of our lives co-create the reality of our
lives as we experience them.